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About the Manual

The Nerd Manual is meant to be both a useful resource for nerds and a guide for the people involved with nerds. If you're a nerd you can find information here that will help you improve your life and perhaps better understand yourself. If you're close friends with, dating, or married to a nerd, I want to give you insight into things nerds do that a lot of people have difficulty understanding.

I hope to avoid offending anyone--either nerd or non-nerd--but please understand that the manual will get into some sensitive topics, stray into contentious territories, and even use stereotypes to illustrate points. It's OK to disagree with something, but keep your comments civil.

2015-09-24

I'm a very outgoing woman but I'm attracted to a shy, awkward nerd: how do I get him to go out with me...and maybe take things further?

You may have noticed this already: the majority of nerds are, as you put it, shy and awkward. A lot of nerds don't realize they're attractive, or they're simply insecure, which means they misinterpret signals that other people easily pick up, so they don't typically make the first move.

2015-09-02

Meatspace -- Refers to real-life,
as opposed to the virtual world including social networks, gaming, chat and streaming video.

Meatspace
is a fun word that plays on the growing irony of how we have to define our realities.
The term originates in science fiction (particularly cyberpunk) as the antonym of cyberspace. We don't use the word cyberspace much anymore, but nerds still like to toy with accepted convention by bending terminology to our whims. Until this century, virtual reality was a science fiction concept, and the most advanced examples of it were clunky toys that no one took
seriously. 20th century humans didn't have to preface a meeting with non-virtual, but 21st century people spend a significant amount of time immersed in
some sort of digital facsimile of life.

This nerdism hasn't broken into the mainstream yet, but it's more and more applicable every year as
people regularly use online services for making friends, chatting, gaming,
dating and nearly any other interaction that used to happen only when two people were within touching distance of each other. We're already at a point where it is sometimes
necessary to clarify if something happened online or in meatspace,
and it's likely we'll soon have to specify that our friends join us
at the Starbucks in meatspace, rather than using their smartphone or Oculus Rift.

Phil South - Sword Girl Not all nerds like swords. But a lot of people do like swords, so this question's worth entertaining. ...

Notes

Is there a "Geek Manual"?Valid question, seeing as how there is a difference in the connotation of nerd versus geek. However, in the common parlance, nerd and geek are terms used interchangeably to classify people who have also been identified as brainiacs, dorks, dweebs, eggheads and spazzes. If you are unable to accept “nerd” as a catchall term for this social group, it is highly likely you are a nerd or a geek, but keep in mind that no one is forcing you to read this guide. (If someone is forcing you to read this guide, use this major flaw as an argument not to make you read it.)

A note on genderGiven that the majority of nerds are male, this manual will often refer to nerds with the male pronoun. This is not meant to marginalize female nerds, nor is it a statement about feminism, chauvinism, or any other -ism. It is simply a way to keep things simple.